Åke Edwardson - Sail of Stone

He was someone else now.

This is too weird, she thought. I can see him changing before my eyes.

“She lent it to me, of course,” he said. “May I go now?”

He turned around and walked into the room and immediately came back with a briefcase that looked expensive, expensive like the suit he was wearing.

“I needed this,” he said.

“Give me the key,” she said.

“She let me borrow it,” he said, with a childishly defiant voice. He made a disappointed face. This man is a raving lunatic, she thought. Dangerous, he’s very dangerous.

He looked at her furtively. Now he was smiling. He threw the keys across the room at her. She let them land on the floor next to her. She wasn’t totally nuts.

He put the briefcase under his arm.

“May I go now? I have some work to take care of.” He held up the briefcase. “That’s why I came here. I need it to take care of my work.”

Go, just go, she thought. She moved, stood by the wall.

“Nice to run into you,” he said; he bowed and walked out through the door and she stood still and heard him mumble something to himself as the elevator creaked its way up, and then he went in and it clattered away and she could feel the sweat on her back now, and between her breasts, in her groin, her hands. She knew that she had been close to something awful. She knew that she never wanted to be alone in a room again with that man.

Suddenly she understood the woman, Anette Lindsten, at the same time as she understood less than ever. She understood the silence. And the running away. She didn’t understand anything else.

She locked the apartment door after her.

When she came out, the sky had grown lighter and opened up in different shades of brown. The rows of houses looked like they were ready to take off, like spaceships of stone, and sail away through the leathery sky, to a better world.

A routine set in, unrelenting in its indifference to people’s misfortunes. What else could have happened, he thought as he sat at his desk. This desk, worn down by papers and by photographs heavy with blood. Yes. Heavy with blood.

Worn down by elbows, thoughts, murmurs, outbursts, interruptions. Break-ins. Once someone had broken into his office. The thief had lowered himself down from the jail and gotten in through the open window and stolen the Panasonic and was nabbed out in the corridor, of course. But what a thing to happen! Winter had tipped his hat. The guy is in on suspicion of theft and he breaks out of the unbreakable and immediately breaks in again and commits another theft! In the police building! Touché! He had long been a role model in the mire of gangsters in the southeast side of the city, where even the sun kept its distance.

Southeast. He thought of southeastern London, below Brixton. Croydon. And above: Bermondsey, Charlton, shady districts southeast of the river. Millwall, the soccer team that God forgot. We are Millwall, no one likes us.

His colleague who investigated murders there. And who had solved all but one, and that failure always left him without peace.

They had accompanied each other down into the abyss, back then, on those streets, and later here, too, in Gothenburg. Winter hadn’t gotten over it, never would. He was still human, in the middle of all the routines. No, on the contrary: The routines helped him to retain his humanity.

He looked at the clock and picked up the phone and dialed the number.

“Yeah, hello?”

“Steve? It’s Erik Winter here.”

“Well, well.”

“How’s it going?”

“Going, going, gone. Counting the days to my retirement.”

“Come on. You’re still a young man,” said Winter.

“That’s just wishful thinking, man.”

Winter smiled. Macdonald was referring to Winter’s age, which was exactly the same as the Scottish inspector’s.

“Do you know that song, oh thou Erik the rock ’n’ roll wizard?”

“What song?”

“It’s been a long, long, long time.”

“Sure. It’s by Steve Macdonald and the Bad News.”

“It’s George Harrison. Heard the name?”

Macdonald was quiet for a second.

“When members of the Beatles leave the world, the world is not the same,” he then said.

“I think I can understand,” said Winter.

“Did you feel that way about Coltrane? Or Miles Davis?”

“In some way. And then again, not. If I understand what you’re feeling.”

“Shall we leave that topic?” said Macdonald.

“I met someone from the past,” said Winter.

“I’m listening.”

Winter described his conversation with Johanna Osvald.

“Might be time to put out a missing person alert soon,” said Macdonald.

“I’ll talk about it with her again,” said Winter.

“If the dad doesn’t turn up soon, maybe I can ask around a little,” said Macdonald.

Winter knew that Steve was from a little town a short way from Inverness. He didn’t remember the name right now.

“Did you work in Inverness, Steve?”

“Yes. I was even a detective inspector. I moved there from the police station in Forres, which was the nearest big city.”

“Where was that, again?”

“Home? A little Wild West hole of a town, called Dallas.”

Winter laughed.

“It’s true,” said Macdonald. “Dallas, the mother of big Dallas in big Texas. And my Dallas consists of one street and a row of houses on either side and that’s all, except for the two farms on the southern slope, one of which is ours.”

Right. Winter knew that Macdonald was a farmer’s son.

“My brother still works on the farm,” said Macdonald.

“Are your parents still living?”

“Yes.”

Winter was quiet.

“I also have a sister, and she actually lives in Inverness now,” said Macdonald.

“I didn’t know that,” said Winter.

“I didn’t either, six months ago,” said Macdonald. “Eilidh lived down here in the Smoke, up on the regular-people side of Hampstead, but something happened between her and her husband so she headed back, and within twenty-four hours or something she had established herself at a new office up there.”

“New office?”

“Eilidh is a lawyer. Everything but criminal law. Now she runs a little office with another woman of the same age. Macduff and Macdonald, Solicitors. They’ve made the whole farm in Dallas proud.”

“Prouder than they are of you?”

“Jesus, Erik, no one has ever thought of me with pride.”

“That’s good,” said Winter.

“But Eilidh is a Scottish dame worth admiration.”

“How old is she?” asked Winter.

“Why?” asked Macdonald, and Winter thought he heard a smile.

“I was asking out of politeness,” said Winter.

“Thirty-seven,” said Macdonald. “Five years younger than you and me.”

“Mmhmm.”

“And ten times more beautiful than you and me.”

“I’d call that beautiful,” said Winter.

“But I don’t think she’ll be much help with this,” said Macdonald.

“Depending on what happens, is it okay if I call again and ask you to check around with your colleagues up there?” asked Winter.

“Of course.”

“Good.”

“Maybe I should run up and check it out myself,” said Macdonald.

“Sorry?”

“Nah, I was just thinking out loud. But it would be nice to have a change of scenery. What do you say? Shall we plan to meet in Inverness and solve a new mystery together?”

Winter laughed.

“What mystery?”

Four days later he would not be laughing at Macdonald’s joke because it would no longer be a joke. The joke would become a mystery.

Aneta Djanali was in her own little world, a better world. She drank a glass of wine in silence. It was red wine. Burkina Faso ought to have been a good country for wine. The grapes were big and terribly sweet. There was nothing to grow in, but they grew anyway. Not many people drank wine in the partially Muslim Burkina Faso. Maybe that was why. No one could afford wine, either. Few had seen a bottle of wine. She had seen one at a hotel in Ouagadougou, carried to a fat and loud French family who were eating lamb and couscous with their sleeves rolled up. The waiter had carried the bottle as though it contained nitroglycerin.